Flesh and Blood by Sian Rosé (100 books to read .txt) 📕

her arms from shaking, then moved her head closer to the glass. When she strained her eyes, she could make out the intricate pattern of net curtains and nothing more beyond the off-white lace. Her arms quivered again, and she sank her front teeth into the tip of her tongue.

What next?

She backed away, dry earth creeping into her sandals as she stepped backwards onto an unkempt front lawn that lay ahead of the terraced house. The place was hardly the flashy mansion of some high-profile gangster. Glancing up at the wholly unglamorous building, she squinted to see if she could detect any movement from the upper windows. But they, just like their lower counterparts, were empty. Dark and void of life.

Before her brain had the chance to talk her out of it, she dragged herself towards the front door, with its dreary paint chipped and peeling over its surface. Hovering like a knock-kneed kid outside the fearsome head teacher’s office, she moved from foot to foot, chewing nervously on her already torn lips. With a deep, sharp intake of breath, she moved forward. Bringing her knuckle to the door, she tapped out a rhythmic knock. Her fist felt like a numb wad of jelly on a stick, and the noise it created against the door was feeble and unsatisfactory.

Yet she waited, unwilling to knock again. As though the door was made of lava, she hurriedly retracted her hand and froze, her eyes wide and unblinking as they remained fixed on the front door.

Wind panted in her ears, and suddenly the summer night air was cold and unforgiving against the sides of her neck. She gulped. Blood roared and drummed in her ears, so loud and so vicious that she did not hear movement behind the front door before it was roughly being pulled open, revealing a tall, slender figure in the dark doorway.

Sharp but beautiful features stared expectantly outwards, cold eyes piercing into her skin, searching her up and down, sizing her up like a bloody joint of meat in the supermarket.

“Yes?” a heavily accented voice half-demanded, its glassiness jolting Minnie out of her bewildered daze.

The tall blonde who stood before her looked like some sort of supermodel, with perfectly sculpted facial features, a stick-thin body, and a bountiful sliver of cleavage peeking tauntingly out of the top of her dark, skin-tight jumper.

Minnie’s throat prickled, as dry as sandpaper.

“I’m looking for my boyfriend,” she blurted out dumbly. Her rushed words seemed to sit, uncomfortably transfixed into the cold air for a few moments, their utter ridiculousness reflected back to her. A sharp stab of fear probed her in the bottom of her spine, a flashing red siren of a warning.

Run.

“What makes you think he would be here?” the blonde asked. Her face softened into an amused smile. She folded her arms, evidently relaxing.

“I…”

“Oh,” the woman interrupted before Minnie could reply, “is it… is your boyfriend the intruder? The thief?”

The accusatory expression felt like a glass platter smashing over Minnie’s head, but she attempted to swallow back her fear. “I’m sure there’s just been a misunderstanding.”

“Oh?”

“My boyfriend and I… we were just….”

Eyes sparkling in the night, the blonde glanced around the still emptiness of the night before stepping backwards and gesturing down the narrow, dark hallway behind her. An unpleasant smirk was playing across her glossy, plump lips, as though she were the mean girl bullying the ugly, fat kid.

“Misunderstanding? Then you come in and explain?”

Minnie’s mouth fell open. She could feel her heart beating uncomfortably fast inside her rib cage, rattling the bones.

With a short breath inwards, she placed her hand protectively over the barely-there bulge of her abdomen. Swallowing back her fear, she nodded and took a brave step forwards.

Chapter Thirty-two

2019

Flo knelt on the ground. She nibbled nervously at the skin around her thumb and kept glancing between her two older brothers, whose faces were both twisted and red with indecision.

Also on the ground, a few feet away from Flo, lay Sambuca and Destiny. Both girls had the sides of their faces pressed into the dirt, their exposed faces wobbling and blotchy with tears. Their skinny, pale arms joined in the middle, stubby fingers clasped around each other.

Every so often, Lloyd or Zach would tell them to shut the fuck up. Flo felt herself overwhelmed with an irreconcilable difference. Half of her was filled with delight and excitement, her entire body on fire with the thrill of this impromptu capture. But then, the other half-remembered the darkness in her father’s face as he warned the children to ‘lay low.’ In her short eight years of life, Flo had learned that whilst there was so much joy to be had in controlling and prolonging the suffering of others, it was not an activity that constituted ‘laying low.’

Daddy was going to be furious.

“Why’d you have to text Mum and Dad?” snapped Zach, for the fourth or fifth time in the last half an hour. He glared angrily at his little sister. “We could’ve dealt with this on our own.”

Flo rolled her eyes, “you two really are as dumb as each other, aren’t you?” she glanced at Lloyd, who was uncharacteristically quiet.

Destiny whimpered and lifted her head slightly off the ground. With wide, watery eyes, she stared pleadingly up at Flo, no doubt expecting a child to have some form of mercy.

Flo stood up and coldly held the teenager’s gaze.

“P-p-p-please…”

Her body tingling with the thrill, Flo roughly kicked the girl as hard as she could across her face, causing her to let out a loud, blood-curdling shriek of pain and terror which cut through the satisfying crunch of the cheekbone.

Sambuca burst into fresh floods of ugly tears, her face twisted and red as she gripped tighter onto her friend’s clammy palm. She wriggled nearer towards her, her eyes widening in horror as she caught the size of the bloody gash that now glistened beneath her eye socket. The girl’s pitiful cries were interrupted by the sudden crunch of dry grass